FCA Mortgage Lending Statistics: Quarterly UK Market Data

Around 340 regulated UK mortgage lenders and administrators have been required to submit quarterly returns since 2007, providing a detailed regulatory view of the market. The outstanding value of all residential mortgage loans was £1,499 billion at the end of 2019 Q4, 3.8% higher than the previous year. This dataset is jointly published by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulatory Authority.

Use Cases

• Monitoring market stability based on quarterly trends in gross advances and outstanding loan values.
• Analyzing lender activity and concentration using data submitted by approximately 340 regulated entities.
• Forecasting housing market trends based on new mortgage commitments, which indicate future lending.
• Assessing regulatory policy impact by tracking changes in lending volumes and loan characteristics over time.

Strengths

• Data collection is mandatory for around 340 regulated entities, ensuring high coverage of the UK mortgage market.
• Provides a consistent quarterly time series starting from 2007, enabling long-term trend analysis.
• Includes specific, high-value metrics like £1,499 billion in outstanding loans and £73.4 billion in gross advances for 2019 Q4.

Limitations

• Specific column names and the granularity of the underlying data are not provided in the available metadata.
• The 'last updated' metadata field (2026-07-08) appears to be a future date, suggesting potential platform timestamp errors.
• The dataset's size (rows, file size) is unknown, limiting an assessment of its scale and manageability.

Provenance

Source

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA), United Kingdom.

Collection Method

Mandatory quarterly submissions (Mortgage Lending and Administration Return - MLAR) from regulated mortgage lenders and administrators.

Time Range

Quarterly data from 2007 onward, with specific figures provided for 2018 Q4 and 2019 Q4.

Freshness

The metadata indicates a last updated date of 2026-07-08, but this is a future date and likely erroneous. The descriptive content references data up to 2019 Q4.

Geography

United Kingdom.